Obesity is a condition that is of epidemic proportions in the United States. Recent government studies have indicated that up to 40% of Americans are obese and, of those, almost 20% are morbidly obese. In and of itself, though, obesity is not the problem. The difficulty with obesity arises with the multiple conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obstructive sleep apnea, that occur with this ubiquitous problem. There have been many attempts among the prior art to treat obesity, all of which either have serious side effects or are ineffective.
For example, various diets, supplements and pharmaceuticals have been developed and marketed in an attempt to treat obesity. None of these, though, have had any significant benefit to date with the exception of some of the pharmaceuticals which have also been associated with many serious, life-threatening conditions. To date, there are no commercially available supplements or drugs on the market that have been found to have significant success in weight reduction.
Recognizing this, the medical industry has begun turning to more extreme measures, the best example of which is the Roux-En-Y gastric bypass. More effective, but also potentially lethal, this major surgery with 1–2% mortality, 6 month recovery period and a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars, is still increasing in popularity due to the inefficacy of other treatments. Gastric reduction, or simply removing a large segment of the stomach, is similar to gastric bypass in its potentially lethal complications.
There is evidence, though, that benefit can be derived from the reduction in gastroduodenal flow. For instance, as presented at the American Society for Bariatric Surgery conference in June 2003, it has been discussed that stimulation of the gastric vagus nerve with subsequent reduction in gastric motility resulted in loss of over 20% of excess weight in a nine month period. Furthermore, there is data suggesting that a gastric vagotomy is also effective in the treatment of obesity trough a similar mechanism. These therapies, though, require highly invasive, sometimes irreversible, surgical procedures.